Differential Fault Analysis (DFA) is an attack on a cryptosystem in the form of directed energy such as heavy ion bombardment, RF energy, temperature shock, barometric shock, UV light, and laser energy. With a particular source of directed energy, an attack may seek to cause a single event fault (SEF). Just one SEF may yield a successful attack. However, known security systems have not focused on immunity to SEFs due to the relative novelty of fault based attacks of cryptanalytic intent.
Recent investigations into security mechanisms for cryptosystems have yielded unexpected findings regarding the nature of cryptographic systems as a whole. In particular, it has been discovered that one-bit errors may result from radiation or other environmental stresses. As a result, it has been found that a one-bit error or DFA can successfully attack the RSA Public Key Algorithm and symmetric ciphers, namely the Data Encryption Standard (DES).
Due to the lack of an adequate security mechanism for immunizing cryptosystems from DFA, one-bit attacks or SEFs, what is needed is a fault analysis hardening apparatus for a cryptosystem and a method of evaluating a cryptosystem to determine whether the cryptosystem can withstand a fault analysis attack, particularly a SEF or DFA.